Rescue Me
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Was AJ about to kiss her?
Mary Hannah stared into his intense blue eyes, wondering if the heated intent was real or an illusion from the dash lights. She should just open the door, get the hell out of his messy all-terrain vehicle where these even messier emotions were jumbling up inside her. She would hop the gate to the Second Chance Ranch and run all the way to her studio apartment.
But she couldn’t seem to make her hands let go of the edge of the seat.
PRAISE FOR
THE SECOND CHANCE RANCH NOVELS
SHELTER ME
“There is indeed plenty of love to go around, and animal fans in particular will be swept away by it.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A story about the redemptive power of love told with heart. With Shelter Me, Catherine Mann delivers another unforgettable romance.”
—Cindy Gerard, New York Times bestselling author
“Shelter Me is contemporary romance done right! Brimming with wonderfully real characters, hard-hitting emotions and enough sexual tension to light my e-reader on fire, I couldn’t put it down!”
—Julie Ann Walker, New York Times bestselling author
PRAISE FOR
THE NOVELS OF CATHERINE MANN
“Catherine Mann weaves deep emotion with intense suspense for an all-night read.”
—Sherrilyn Kenyon, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Catherine Mann’s picture should be in the dictionary next to ‘superb.’”
—Suzanne Brockmann, New York Times bestselling author
“A brilliant . . . adventure woven with gripping emotion.”
—Dianna Love, New York Times bestselling author
“Heart-pounding.”
—Booklist
Berkley Sensation titles by Catherine Mann
Second Chance Ranch Novels
SHELTER ME
RESCUE ME
Dark Ops Novels
DEFENDER
HOTSHOT
RENEGADE
PROTECTOR
GUARDIAN
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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RESCUE ME
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2015 by Catherine Mann.
Excerpt from Shelter Me by Catherine Mann copyright © 2014 by Catherine Mann.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63749-4
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / February 2015
Cover illustration by Anna Kmet.
Cover design by Diana Kolsky.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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To my husband, Rob—thank you for always supporting me in my animal rescue efforts, for listening when I ramble endlessly about the latest cool thing I learned about animal care and for holding me when I cry for the ones I couldn’t save.
Acknowledgments
As always, I am deeply grateful to my editor, Wendy McCurdy, and the entire Berkley team for the opportunity to tell these animal rescue stories that are so near and dear to my heart. Endless thanks also goes out to my longtime agent, Barbara Collins Rosenberg, for always being in my corner. My critique partner and very best friend, Joanne Rock, is truly one in a million—I appreciate you, my friend, more than I could ever say. Many thanks as well to my super beta readers—Haley Frank and Jeanette Vigliotti—I adore you both and appreciate your always being there for me at the drop of a hat.
I’m also lucky to have the most amazing street team, led by Ann, Vickie and Stephanie. Wow, y’all are the best! I’m so grateful for each and every one of you—for your cheers, your support and, most of all, your friendship.
Daily, I’m blessed to work side by side with my friends in the animal rescue community, in particular the staff and volunteers at the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society. I want to send a shout-out to a few of my shelter volunteer friends who so deeply embody the heart of rescue—Susie, Zo, Virginia, Debbie and Dixie. I want to be just like you when I grow up.
Lastly, all my love to my two-legged family and my four-legged pack. Thank you for loving me back!
Contents
Praise for the Novels of Catherine Mann
Berkley Sensation titles by Catherine Mann
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Epilogue
Special Excerpt from Shelter Me
Prologue
FOR TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS I had three names—Bitch, Fat Mama and Dumbass.
I didn’t dare ignore the voice that growled more fiercely than any animal. I didn’t question if I deserved to have a single name of my own. My existence followed a pattern. Hungry, not hungry. Hurt, healed. Pregnant, nursing. And above all, obey or pay.
Looking back, the contrast from then to my life now is staggering. Some people have said they wonder how I survived so long in that cabin with limited human contact, only the drone of game shows on television and the bubbling mix in the kitchen to break the tedium. How I kept my spirit intact. How I didn’t turn into a mirror image of the voice that both fed me and hurt me. I have to confess I came close to becoming like the soulless monsters that drifted in and out during those early years.
Until I was saved from crawling into the dark hole of hurt and misery forever. I was given a hint of hope beyond the rank four walls of my home.
I smelled honeysuckle.
Just a whiff of the perfume drifted throu
gh an open window one summer Tennessee day. At first, I thought I’d imagined it. I tipped my nose into that gentle breeze curling through the half-cracked pane, each puff parting the despair one ripple at a time. Overriding even the constant hum of quiz shows.
Then there it was again. Honeysuckle. Sweet. Soft. Light. Everything opposite of what I’d known from birth.
Desperate for more, I crawled to the window, slowly, praying no one would see me. Life was easier if I stayed hidden, because otherwise I feared I would one day have to fight back. Still I was willing to risk detection to breathe more of that flowery perfume.
I have a particularly keen sense of smell, so living in a filthy meth house for twenty-eight years took a toll on me. And just to clarify, twenty-eight human years equates to four dog years for me. As a dog, that explains why the stench hit me hard.
Did you know that canines can identify smells up to ten thousand times better than a human? Well, we can. I learned that about sniffers on Jeopardy! My brain has forty percent more capacity devoted to smell than yours. Not that I mean to sound condescending or call you inferior. Facts are facts. I have more than two million olfactory sensors in my nose. You have opposable thumbs. Truly, aromatherapy is wasted on you people.
I like facts. The endless television programs offered that much at least, game show after game show. Back then, I embraced those quizzes, soaking up data, anything to prove I wasn’t a dumbass at all. If I’d been a human and hadn’t started having babies so early, I’ve often thought I would have become a professor with thick black glasses. I would have sequestered myself in an office lined with books, solitude. Peace.
But back to my sniffer.
Back to the honeysuckle.
And how all that relates to the day I found freedom in a splintered door.
To be clear, I spent my life watching methamphetamine being cooked, smoked, shot, sold. The rancid odor of the drug left me groggy. Sometimes even made me snarl, when that’s not my nature. The smell of it saturated the walls, peeling the paper down in strips I chewed in moments of frenzied boredom. It permeated the saggy sofa I never sat on. Even clung to the mattresses on the floor in both bedrooms where junkies had sex. Worst of all, the toxic clouds hung in the kitchen, counters packed with everything from drain cleaner to funnels to my bowl full of scraps.
But that afternoon during my fourth summer, when I discovered honeysuckle, I considered that maybe, just maybe, there was something better for me, if only I could wait long enough to escape farther than the chain in the yard allowed.
Easier said than done, because I was a moneymaker, just like that steaming meth cooker. My litters of boxer pups were worth a lot, so I ate well, periodically. No one kicked me for a while. Until my babies were taken away so I could breed again. They always took them too early, and then I was alone.
You may already be thinking puppy mill, but that’s not one hundred percent accurate. The woman who owned me—I won’t bother to distinguish her with a name—would be more appropriately labeled a backyard breeder who used me and other dogs to supplement her meth income. Up until that honeysuckle moment in my fourth summer, I thought my mission in life was to have babies for people to love even if I never got to experience that feeling myself, other than for the few brief weeks I was allowed to keep each litter, their warm, tiny bodies snuggled up against me.
By the fourth winter, I wondered if I’d imagined a honeysuckle world just to survive. I began to lose hope, drawing in nothing but the fumes that made me mean.
Then, on the bitterest, coldest morning, my world changed on a larger scale with another beautiful scent. Peppermint. It’s still my favorite perfume, even above honeysuckle. Those two beautiful smells outnumbered the one evil stench of that cabin. There was more out there past my chain. So much more.
And I thank the Big Master who made us that the peppermint-scented lady understood I was not at my best the day she and the sad-eyed policeman broke down the meth-house door to rescue me.
One
I’ll take famous cops for five hundred, Alex.
—FEMALE BOXER, FOUR YEARS OLD, BROWN/BLACK CONFISCATE #8
DETECTIVE AJ PARKER started kicking down doors at five years old in hopes of becoming like his idol, Chuck Norris. The first attempt had landed AJ in the emergency room with a broken leg.
Thirty years later, though, he’d perfected the skill. By then he’d gotten a lot of practice as an Atlanta detective. Too much practice. The very reason he’d relocated to the sleepy town of Cooksburg, Tennessee, for a more low-key life. Still, a sixth sense honed from too many years undercover in narcotics told him he would have to channel his inner Chuck before high noon this Christmas Eve.
Raiding a home on a holiday wasn’t particularly holly jolly, but there had been a report of neglected animals inside, and dogs left outdoors without shelter, in imminent danger of dying due to the frigid weather. His boots crunched along the caked snow as AJ approached the isolated cabin with caution. Footsteps crackled behind him—his police-department partner, Wyatt, his cousin who’d gotten him this job.
Oaks and pines circled the clearing, creating a wall of privacy with only one icy path to the cabin. Which also meant there was one lone escape route, and so far no signs of animals or people coming in or out.
A brisk wind cut through his thick coat and bulletproof vest, chilling him all the way to his Southern roots. He and Wyatt accompanied an animal rescue team that had been instructed to stay safe and warm in their van for now, the engine purring softly.
Sunshine glimmered off the icicles spiking from the railing as if nature had decorated for the holidays even if the occupants of this ramshackle place ignored the season. Not so much as a wreath or tinsel in sight. Even the windows were blacked out with thick curtains, making the porch less than inviting.
Not to mention dangerous, depending on who lurked behind those darkened windows.
AJ breathed steady white bursts of air into the December afternoon. But inside AJ’s gut, his instincts were on fire.
Adrenaline burned his veins as he scanned the front yard, deserted except for an old gray truck with a camper top. There wasn’t snow on the hood, so the vehicle had been driven recently. The place was silent other than the grunt of a distant deer and a crisp wind whistling through the trees, boughs burdened with snow.
His cop senses burned hotter with each step closer to the cabin. Complicating matters, he had that contingent of animal rescuers behind him in the van. He held up a hand reminding them to stay back.
Then he saw it.
A thick chain, almost covered with snow, glinted through the powdery white like twisted garland spilling out of an overturned trash can. A brown mass of fur was curled up in the back. A large dog that didn’t growl, bark—or even move.
Shit. They might already be too late.
He heard a car door open and caught the movement out of the corner of his eyes a second before one of the rescuers shot past. He didn’t have to guess who it had been.
Mary Hannah Gallo.
A fearless dynamo in a paisley parka.
And a giant pain in his butt.
His first night in Cooksburg, they’d had an impulsive one-night stand of crazy-good sex—his first since his life had gone to hell in a handbasket. The connection had sizzled so damn hot he’d been stunned stupid when he woke up the next morning and found she’d left the motel room already.
Worse yet, she’d given him a fake name. Francesca Vale. Not even a good made-up name. And he fell for that shit in spite of more than a decade collaring criminals.
He hadn’t discovered her real name until his cousin tried to set him up on a blind date. AJ’s only consolation? Miss Fakey-Pants Francesca Vale had been every bit as shocked to see him as he was to meet her for real as Mary Hannah Gallo. A buttoned-up mental-health counselor who had a wild-child hidden side. Very hidden. Apparently she’d assumed he was just
traveling through town on his way to Nashville like most people at that truck-stop bar.
That bar.
That motel.
That night.
He willed away the steam-charged memories. He couldn’t afford to think about anything except getting the job done and keeping those with him safe. Especially the Queen of Mistruths making her way to the dog in the trash can.
He understood her urge to charge ahead for the animal’s sake, but damn it, caution saved more lives in the long run. He’d learned that the hard way. And wasn’t that a memory-lane trip that could walk him straight to hell like in some bad teenage horror film?
“Gallo,” he hissed between his teeth. “Get back to the van.”
Without even turning, she waved away his concern and crouched near the toppled trash can, a blanket tucked under her arm. The winter gear hid how freaking petite she was as she crawled closer. And that petite frame hid a will of steel. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know about that night at the bar, and she didn’t want to have anything more to do with him. Fine by him. Except they’d been made the target of matchmakers determined to pair them up, in spite of how many times he and Mary Hannah told them no. No. And hell no.
It wasn’t surprising she’d been sent with him today.
Now she was a great big stubborn distraction a few feet away. She wasn’t budging unless he threw her over his shoulder and forcibly moved her. Which she would know full well he didn’t have time to do.
Or even think about.
At least she would be on the side of the house when he pressed ahead. All the action would be focused at the front door. Left with no choice, he hauled his attention off Mary Hannah’s fine ass in blue jeans and back to assessing the cabin.
Mewling and muffled woofs swelled from inside the cabin. The animals had picked up on his arrival, which meant any people behind those blacked-out windows would know soon as well. If they didn’t already. He climbed the slick steps with sure feet, no hesitation.
He thumped the door with his gloved fist, launching a fresh blast of barks. “This is the police. We have a warrant to search the premises.”